TV Review | 'The Night Of': Turturro fills big shoes in lead role

When John Turturro was offered a starring role in the HBO limited series ‘‘The Night Of,’’ he was torn.

Turturro, a veteran movie actor, had done relatively little television and was not a huge fan of the form. And when he learned that this role once belonged to James Gandolfini of ‘‘The Sopranos,’’ he said two words to himself: ‘‘Oh no.’’

‘‘I was friends with him,’’ he said in a recent interview. ‘‘I went to his wedding. I went to his funeral.’’

Gandolfini appeared in the pilot for ‘‘The Night Of’’ and was an executive producer for the series, a slow-boiling murder mystery.

Formerly known as ‘‘Criminal Justice,’’ the series is based on a BBC series of the same name.

In June 2013, a month after HBO gave it a green light, Gandolfini died unexpectedly. Robert De Niro was selected to replace him but backed out because of a scheduling conflict.

When Turturro finally saw the pilot, it was a relief. Gandolfini was barely in it.

‘‘I didn’t know how big a part he had done,’’ Turturro said. ‘‘Say if he had done, like, the whole thing, I would have been ‘Ahhh, oh my God, I have to erase that from my memory.’ I had nothing really to erase.’’

And that opened the door for something that has happened only occasionally in this celebrated actor’s long career: Turturro, 59, got a lead role in a high-profile project.

‘‘The Night Of,’’ an eight-part series that will premiere Sunday on HBO, centers on the murder of a young Upper West Side woman and a Pakistani-American college student who is charged with the crime.

The series explores the intricacies and flaws of New York’s criminal-justice system and at times, can feel reminiscent of the real-life stories in the first season of the podcast ‘‘Serial’’ or the Netflix documentary ‘‘Making a Murderer.’’

‘‘The Night Of’’ was created by Steven Zaillian, who wrote the screenplay for ‘‘Schindler’s List,’’ and the author Richard Price.

Turturro plays John Stone, a low-rent lawyer who is trying to keep the student out of jail. What Stone lacks in a big salary or star clients — he’s a precinct crawler who usually works on small cases involving prostitution or drug offenses — he makes up for with street smarts. Soon, he’s investigating the murder in his spare time.

Though Turturro has little in common with the world-weary lawyer — the character suffers from a crippling bout of eczema on his feet and has a cheesy slogan: ‘‘No Fee ‘Til You’re Free’’ — they have at least one thing that connects them: They’re New York characters.

For this role, Turturro took his natural voice and went even bigger: a New York accent on steroids.

‘‘Matter of fact, the way I talked was more of a guy from the ‘70s,’’ he said. ‘‘If you look at the old ‘The Taking of Pelham One Two Three’ or look at how Jerry Stiller and Walter Matthau and all those guys talked, they have a New York sound that doesn’t really exist anymore.’’

‘‘I knew guys like that from my dad’s generation,’’ he continued. ‘‘Salt of the Earth. One of these guys who you’d underestimate.’’

"The Night Of" will premiere at 9 p.m. Sunday on HBO